


Circle Of...

by theladyofwords



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 00:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyofwords/pseuds/theladyofwords
Summary: Velora quite happily discovers her magic and begins to learn more and more, only to discover her run-in with Vecna may have altered her somehow.





	1. Control Flames

Velora is excited when she casts her first spell, after months of trying the same cantrip she read of once in one of Whitestone’s many books. Controlling the flame of the candle she reads by and fighting the sheer urge to run to her sister and show her. For the past few years she has spent her winters there, watching her sister’s family grow, and spending Winter’s Crest Eve with her sister, and sometimes a few others, in the small temple of the Raven Queen, lighting candles in the memory of a brother she hadn’t gotten the chance to know so well.  
  
Instead of waking her sister, she goes to him instead. She knows he probably won’t ever know she’s down there in the tiny alcove. But she’s got his gift around her waist still to this day. The snake she spends her mornings reading to, the snake she takes into the gardens of Syngorn so he can slither around the pretty bushes. He might not know she’s there, letting him see her first spell before anyone else, but she knows it - and it feels  _special._ She likes to think he’d be excited for him, and from what she remembers of him, he would be.  
  
She has to light the candles the non-magical way, by hand, and it takes a few minutes to light them all. And despite lighting them all, the small temple still looks dark. But she raises her hands and one by one turn the flickering flames into what she thinks are pretty damn good ravens. Well, the last couple are, most of them just look like fat seagulls she reckons.  
  
Velora smiles brightly and wipes the sweat from her brow, despite the cold outside and in the drafty temple.   
  
“Look Vax, I’ve got magic!” She tells him, a bright smile on her face.

She doesn’t understand why her father doesn’t seem as happy as her sister did for her. Why he frowns at her. Her nieces loved her trick. Percy patted her on the back. Mother seemed happy for her as well. He only frowns at the little bird as it flickers.


	2. Beautiful

By the next winter, she can mend broken things. But she knows to hide it from her father. She mostly fixes the rips and tears at the bottom of her skirts as she frolics through the woods that surround Syngorn, and drifts around the gardens with Simon.  
  
When winter comes, the beautiful lady with red hair joins them for a week as Winter’s Crest celebrations begin. She seems sad, for the most part. A look of longing in her eyes when she looks at her nieces, and the rest of her sister’s odd friends.

Velora discovers that the druid slips into the town center every morning and talks to the Sun Tree, the most beautiful tree Velora has ever seen, and talks to it. Somehow the tree makes her laugh. And suddenly Velora is sure that this woman is the most beautiful woman in the world, and wishes she too could make her smile like that.  
  
Instead, later in the day, something slips out of her mouth, she’s not sure what, that makes the woman cry.  
  
She cries later that night too.  
  
And spends the remainder of her trip trying to talk to the tree too, so she can know its secrets.


	3. Sun Tree

In the autumn, Velora gets the trees of Syngorn to talk to her. They are mostly dull and polite, but tell her tales her father wouldn’t dare tell her. She meets the tree that Vex’ahlia favored, as she hid from her lessons in its branches, and the tree that Vax’ildan used to nap under. They become her favorite trees in the whole city.  
  
In the winter she almost doesn’t speak to the Sun Tree. She is too scared. But she musters up the bravery and marches down to the square anyways. She visits Vax first though, and tells him what all she’s been learning.  
  
She’s never felt as small as she does beneath it’s branches - and her sister is close friends to a _Goliath_ who is always happy to lift her onto his shoulder or spin her around until she’s dizzy ( _or until Percy says that's enough_ ).  
  
When she presses her hand to its bark, feels its warmth, its calmness, and begins to hear its _voice_. She understands why Keyleth smiles and laughs with the tree. She begins to visit it everyday of her visit too.


	4. Druidcraft

Velora is surprised when next winter Keyleth pulls her aside, takes her into her own chambers. She’s never been in Keyleth’s room before. Not even when she was visiting, and Keyleth was not. Keyleth’s room was _always_ Keyleth’s room whether it was vacant or occupied by her.  
  
Keyleth teaches her the spell Druidcraft, she begins to teach her Druidic, and tells her so many stories about Vax’ildan she’s never heard before.  
  
She now knows why she made her cry that one night.  
  
She reminds her of Vax’ildan.  
  
But somehow that only makes her feel prouder.  
  
She also learns that he too, picked up Druidic magic. She’s not the first in her family to find that path, although Vax picked it up at the very end of his life, and she as it was just beginning.


	5. Air Ashari

Velora manages to spend a summer with the Air Ashari. She’s not quite sure how Keyleth and Vex’ahlia talk father into it, especially when father frowns everytime her magic is brought up, but they somehow succeed.

It is her first summer outside Syngorn, she finds she likes it more. It is not as humid or hot, it is cooler and dryer - and the summer storms are magnificent. Keyleth takes her under her wing, but gives her plenty of freedom too. She learns under so many of the Ashari there.

Which herbs do what, which animals are found where, and how to talk to them. She even learns a healing spell - Cure Wounds - from an old Halfling.


	6. Spores

The next winter Velora begins to seek out her circle. She knows she is not the circle of the moon like Keyleth, in fact, she never feels comfortable in a body other than her _own_.  
  
She finds no affinity towards any of the land circles either.  
  
She keeps searching books and lore until it hits her, like an arrow between her eyes. She cradles her scars from all those years ago as she lays in her bed that night, staring up at the ceiling with an aching pain in her heart.  
  
Perhaps her soul had been tainted that day after all. Perhaps she had been altered by  _him_.  
  
The next morning she rises from bed, walks past the Sun Tree, past the Temple of the Raven Queen, and out of the city gates. To test her theory far from prying eyes, only to find her conclusion right. She can grow spores within the palms of her hands, and it comes far too easier than any bit of magic she's ever learned.  
  
Her magic, her beautiful magic, is aligned with the circle of spores.  
  
But she cannot bare to hate a part of herself. She cannot bare to hate her magic which has brought her so much joy. She pulls the belt from her waist, and pets Simon and confesses it all to him, and decides that her family _can’t know._  
  
She can already see their pitying gazes, sense their fear.  
  
Necromancy magic was something they fought to the bitter end. It was what her brother stood against. It was wielded by those who had harmed Percy’s family.  
  
No, she wouldn’t tell them.  
  
But perhaps she could find the balance within her magic, there must be one... _right_? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally wanted to make a de Rolo child who was a druid with an affinity for plants, but there wasn't any plant-based druid subclasses out there officially. Then the circle of spores was released for test play, and I got inspired. It's essentially a mix of druidic magic and necromancy - so what if Velora's predisposition towards nature was tainted slightly by Vecna's magic during her time with Vecna?


End file.
